Haidar Ali’s Conquest of Bednur

01A claimant at the gate

Keladi had once been strong enough to shelter Rajaram on his flight to Jinji. By the 1760s it was ruled by Rani Virammaji, widow of Basavappa Nayaka II, and the court was split. Haidar Ali, now master of Mysore, took up the cause of a man who claimed the Keladi throne and marched into the Malnad with him. The Keladi forces could not hold the passes, and the army of Mysore came down on Bednur in the forest country west of Shivamogga.

02The fall of the capital

Bednur fell in 1763 with very little fighting. The Rani fled to a hill fort, was taken, and spent the rest of her life a prisoner of Mysore. Haidar renamed the town Haidarnagar and moved much of his treasury and his arsenal there; the wealth of the Keladi kings, gathered from the pepper and areca trade of the coast, paid for his next wars. The Kanara ports, Mangalore and Honnavar among them, now looked to Mysore.